Take an inside look at Mac OS X and its operation. This chapter will cover the Finder and Dock, how these two features interoperate, the possible file and application operations, and how to customize the Finder's tools to suit your tastes.

We're now ready to take an inside look at Mac OS X and its operation.
This chapter will cover the Finder and Dock, how these two features
interoperate, the possible file and application operations, and how to customize
the Finder's tools to suit your tastes. Although much of this chapter will
cover a tool that many users are already familiar with (the Finder), I urge you
to read through the text nonetheless. The Mac OS X Finder has many tricks that
were not present in previous versions.

Using the Finder

The Finder is the application that Mac OS X and earlier versions of the
operating system use to launch and manipulate files and applications. The Finder
handles all common tasks such as creating, deleting, moving, and copying files
and folders. It is, in effect, the window into the Mac OS X operating
system.

Unlike other tools and utilities, the Finder is always active and is
automatically launched immediately after logging in to the system. Much of the
Macintosh's legendary ease of use is attributed to the Finder and its
intuitive interface to the file system.

The Mac OS X Finder is completely rewritten for the new operating system.
Although many users will find that it functions in mostly the same way as
Mac OS 8/9, there are many new features and changes. This section will provide
an in-depth look at these new capabilities and how the Finder is used to
navigate through Mac OS X.

Finder Views and Navigation

The Finder offers many ways to navigate through your data using windows,
menus, and the keyboard. All navigation takes place inside a Finder window. To
open a new Finder window, double-click a folder or disk icon that is on your
desktop. Alternatively, you can use the New Finder Window selection from the
Finder's File menu (Command+N).

Icon View

The first time you log in, the Finder will be in toolbar mode (see Chapter
2, "Mac OS X Basics," for a description of the Finder's toolbar
mode) and using the Icon view. If you have already been using the Finder and
are no longer in Icon view, you can quickly switch to Icon view by choosing
As Icons (Command+1) from the View menu, or by clicking the first icon in the
View area of the toolbar. Figure 3.1
shows a Finder window in Icon view.

Within the Icon view mode, you can navigate through the folders on your drive
by double-clicking them. If you prefer to use the keyboard, you can move between
the icons in the frontmost Finder window by pressing the arrow keys or by typing
the first few letters that start the name of the folder/file you want to select.
To open a selected item, choose Open from the File menu, or press Command+O on
the keyboard.

By default, if the toolbar is displayed in the window, moving from folder to
folder will refresh the current window. You can switch to a multiwindow view by
clicking the toolbar button in the upper-right corner of the Finder window or by
using the Finder Preferences. You can disable the toolbar from the View menu by
choosing Hide Toolbar, or by pressing Command+B to toggle between toolbar
states.

TIP

To toggle between open Finder windows, press Command+´. Note that the
Desktop itself is considered a Finder window.

Another method of navigating your drive is to Command-click the icon or text
in the center of the Finder window's title bar. You will then see a pop-up
menu (as shown in Figure 3.2), which
displays a bottom-to-top hierarchy of the folder path required to reach the
current directory. You can choose any of the folders in the list to quickly
jump to that location.

Figure 3.2 The pop-up folder list
gives quick access to folders above the currently open directory.

NOTE

The one catch to the rule of navigating the Mac OS X file system occurs when
a new Finder window is created, or the Computer button is clicked within the
Finder toolbar. The Finder will display Disks and Network storage icons.
Although these aren't folders per se, you can still open them to get
to the files and folders within.

If, instead, you'd prefer to move to your home directory when a new
Finder window is created, this option is available within the Finder
preferences.

Why Are All My Filenames Cut Off?

At long last, the Mac OS supports long filenames (well, 255-character names
within HFS+). The Finder, however, displays only two lines of each name,
abbreviating the middle with an ellipsis (...).

Thankfully, there is a way to view more of the name of the file. Select the
icon and leave your mouse cursor over an abbreviated title, or hold down Option
while moving your mouse over the title. Without the Option key, a tooltip with
the full name of the file will be displayed under the icon in three or four
seconds. If you hold down the Option key, the expanded label will be shown
instantly.

Icon View Options

You can customize the Icon view by dragging the icons around to suit your tastes.
This is the most basic form of customization offered. To add more dramatic effects
to a window in Icon view, choose Show View Options from the View menu, or press
Command+J. The View Options window for the Icon view is displayed in Figure
3.3.

Figure 3.3 The Icon view options
let you create a different look for the Finder window.

The first decision you must make when adjusting view options is whether or
not to inherit global settings, or apply the changes to the current window. At
the top of the View Options window are two choices: This Window Only and All
Windows. Choosing the first setting tells Mac OS X that the changes you make to
the view are specific to that windowno other windows will be changed. For
example, using This Window Only, you can set your home directory and each of the
directories within it to their own style independently of one another. On the
other hand, picking All Windows applies a system-wide view option to the window,
and indicates that any changes made to the view options will affect any other
windows set to inherit the global settings. This is a great way to create a
common look and feel across multiple folders without having to maintain separate
settings for each.

TIP

If you are setting the attributes for multiple Finder windows, you can speed
up the process by opening all of the windows to adjust and then opening the View
Options window. As you click between the different Finder windows, the contents
of the View Options window change to reflect the settings of the current window.
There is no need to close View Options after setting up a windowjust click
the next Finder window to work with, adjust its settings, and so on.

A window that behaves in this manner is typically called an
"Inspector" in Mac OS X because it allows you to inspect the
attributes of multiple objectsin the case of the Finder, windows.

There are three primary settings for the view, the first being icon size. Mac
OS X supports icon sizes from 16x16 pixels all the way up to 128x128 (the standard
Mac size was previously 32x32). The large icons are very impressive and are
far more detailed than any icons you've ever seen before. You can scale
the icons from their smallest size to the largest size by dragging the Icon
Size slider from the left to the right. Figure
3.4 shows the Applications folder of the Mac OS X drive using the largest
icon size.

Next, you can control the size of the icon label font with the Text Size
pop-up menu. Apple allows a selection between 10 and 16 points, but does not
provide a means of changing the label's font. The positioning of the
icon's label can be changed from on the bottom to the right using the Label
Position setting.

TIP

If you find the Mac OS X antialiased fonts difficult to read, use the General
System Preferences panel to set the smallest font size that Mac OS X will
antialias and the style of antialiasing used.

If you're still displeased with the settings, you can manually set the
antialiasing threshold to anything you'd like using the Terminal
application and the command:

Find out more about the Terminal starting in Chapter 12, "Introducing
the BSD Subsystem."

TIP

The smallest icon size is extremely tiny, especially on high resolution
displays, and leaving the label underneath the icon results in huge gaps between
icons. To maximize your window space, position the icon's label on the
right when using small icons.

The next group of settings control icon arrangement, which determines how the
icons are displayed and laid out on the screen.

To keep your icons straight and neat all the time, choose Snap to Grid. Mac
OS X maintains an invisible grid within Finder windows that is used to keep
icons evenly aligned with one another. Unfortunately, there are no provisions
for changing the spacing on the grid. As a result, Mac OS X icons that are
aligned to the grid might seem more loosely spaced than you'd like.

NOTE

If you take advantage of the Icon view with no preset arrangement, you might
find that your icons get a bit messy after a while. To quickly align your icons
to the Finder's grid, choose Clean Up from the View menu.

You can also choose to display additional information in the icon and its
label. The Show Icon Preview setting will display thumbnails of recognized image
formatseven PDF files! Show Item Info, on the other hand, adds a count of
the number of files contained within each folder directly under each
folder's icon and displays information about media files (size, duration,
and so on).

A final form of icon arrangement is to keep the icons arranged by attributes
of the files that they represent. Click the Keep Arranged By check box, and then
choose from the list of available options:

NameSort the icons by the alphabetical order of their
names.

Date ModifiedSort the icons by the day and time they were
last modified. Newly modified files and folders appear at the bottom of the
list.

Date CreatedSort the icons by the date and time they were
created. The first time a file is saved, the created and modified times are
identical.

SizeSort by the size of the files or the size of the files
contained within folders.

KindSort the files by their type (that is, folders,
applications, images, and so on).

TIP

To quickly arrange icons in a Finder window, use the Arrange submenu from the
View menu. This allows you to arrange your icons by any of the aforementioned
attributes. It's a quick way to add some order to your life without opening
View Options.

Note that if you have an arrangement set for a given window, the Arrange menu
will be dimmed and cannot override your View Option settings.

Finally, the Background option is anew feature of the Mac OS X Finder
that offers you the capability to choose a background color or picture on a
per-folder basis. This enables you to create a very visually impressive system
and can also provide quick cues for your current location within the operating
system.

The default folder background is None. This uses a standard white background
for all windows. To choose an alternative color, just click the Color radio
button. A small square will appear to the right of the button. Click this square
to launch the Mac OS X Color Picker. You can learn more about the Color Picker
in Chapter 2, "Mac OS X Basics." Figure
3.5 shows a Finder window with a tinted background.

Figure 3.5 You can use the OS X Color
Picker to choose your window background color.

An even more impressive effect is to use a background picture for the window
rather than just a color. Background images can be based on any of the
QuickTime-supported formats (GIF, JPEG, TIFF, and so on). Click the Picture
radio button, and then click the Select button that appears. You will be
prompted to open an image file from the system. Using the Open and Save dialogs
is covered in Chapter 2.

After you choose a picture, a thumbnail of your choice will be shown in the
small square (image well) to the left of the Select button. Your Finder window
will refresh with the chosen image in the background. Figure
3.6 shows a Finder window with an image in the background.

In the current 10.2 release of Mac OS X, pictures cannot be scaled to match
the size of a window. Instead, Finder background pictures are tiled, much like a
repeating background on a Web page.

NOTE

The Icon view is presently the only view that supports background colors or
images.

List View

The next view to explore is the Finder's List view. You can switch to
List view by clicking the middle icon in the Finder toolbar's View area,
or, if the toolbar isn't present, by choosing As List from the
Finder's View menu. Demonstrated in Figure 3.7, the List view is a
straightforward means of displaying all available information about a file or
folder on a multicolumn screen.

Figure 3.7 List view packs a lot of information into a small amount of
space.

The columns in the List view represent the attributes of each file. You can
contract or expand the columns by placing the mouse cursor at the edge of the
column and click-dragging to the left or right. Clicking a column highlights it
and sorts the file listing based on that column's values. By default, the
column values are listed in descending order. Clicking a column again will
toggle the sorting order. An arrow pointing up or down at the right of each
column represents the current sort order.

You can reposition the columns by clicking and dragging them into the order
you'd like. However, the first column, Name, cannot be repositioned.

When a folder appears in the file listing, a small disclosure arrow precedes
its name. Clicking this arrow will reveal the file hierarchy within that folder.
You can drill down even further if you'd like, revealing multiple levels of
files. Figure 3.8 shows three levels of files displayed simultaneously. Windows
users might find a level of comfort in this view because it is similar to the
Windows Explorer.

Figure 3.8 The List view can show multiple levels of the file system
within a single window.

As with the Icon view, double-clicking a folder anywhere within this view
will either open a new window (toolbar-less mode) or refresh the contents of the
existing window with the new location.

If keyboard navigation is your thing, the same rules as the Icon view apply.
You can navigate up and down through the listing using the up-arrow key and
down-arrow key. In addition, you can use the left-arrow key and right-arrow key
to move in and out of folders in the hierarchy. Holding down Command+Option
along with the right-arrow key or left-arrow key will expand or collapse all
folders inside the currently selected folder. Typing the first few characters of
an object's name will highlight that object in the listing. You can then
use Command+O to open it.

Finally, Command-clicking on the title of the window will reveal the same
pop-up list of folders as the Icon view. Choose one of the items in the list to
jump to it.

List View Options

As with the Icon view, there are a number of options that you can use to
customize the appearance and functionality of the List view. To alter the
options for a window, make sure that it is the frontmost Finder window, and then
choose Show View Options (Command+J) from the View menu. The List View Option
window is shown in Figure 3.9.

The Icon Size option offers a choice of two icon sizes: small or large. To
change the size of the icon that precedes every line in the list, click the
radio button below the size that you prefer. Unlike the Icon view, the list view
icons cannot be scaled beyond the two presets. Text size for the list can also
be chosen from 10 to 16 points.

The Show Columns option offers seven different attributes that can be
displayed in each list view:

Date ModifiedThe date that a file or folder was last
changed.

Date CreatedThe date that a file or folder was
created.

SizeThe size of a file on the system.

KindAn abstract representation of a file (image,
application, and so on).

VersionDisplays the version of an application. Not always
available in Mac OS X.

CommentsShows any comments set for the file or folder.
Comments are set from the Get Info (Command+I) window.

By checking or unchecking the box in front of each option, you can add or
remove the corresponding column in the List view.

TIP

To determine a file's type from the command line, use file
<filename>:

% file jeans1024x768.jpg

jeans1024x768.jpg: JPEG image data, JFIF standard

For more information about the command line, see Chapter 12.

There are two additional settings that affect the column display:

Use Relative DatesRelative dates are a way of representing
dates relative to the current day. For example, items modified during the
current day are listed as Today, whereas files modified a day earlier are listed
as Yesterday. Clicking the Use Relative Dates check box will display the Created
and Modified columns using these conventions.

Calculate All SizesBy default, folder sizes are not
calculated and displayed in the file listing. Checking this box will enable
folder sizes to be displayed in the file listing.

CAUTION

Calculating folder sizes might seem like a good idea, but it can bog down
your system tremendously. If you have multiple file listing windows open, and
each is calculating folder sizes, it can slow down Finder operations and
application responsiveness.

A quick way to display the usage of each directory is the du command
from the command line:

% du -s *

40 Addresses

0 Assistants

0 Audio

4096 Caches

0 ColorPickers

8 Documentation

16 Favorites

2520 Fire

You can learn more about the command line and its uses starting in Chapter
12.

Column View

The final type of window view is the Column view. This will be recognized by
NeXT-heads as almost identical to the original File Browser used on the NeXT
system. There are two primary advantages of this view: ease of navigation and
file identification. You can switch to the Column view style by choosing As
Columns from the View menu, or by clicking the third icon in the View area of
the toolbar. Figure 3.10 shows a Finder window in Column view.

The Column view is also used in the Open/Save dialog boxes discussed in
Chapter 2. If you're already familiar with the concept, you might want to
skip this sectionit is largely the same.

The key feature of the Column view is its navigation. Unlike the other views,
which can either overwhelm you with information or require multiple windows to
move easily from point to point, the Column view is designed with one thing in
mind: ease of navigation.

The concept is very simple: Click an item in the first column, and its
contents will be shown in the next column. This would be less than useful if the
programmers stopped at this point, so they didn't. You can continue to
drill down further into the file system by choosing a folder that was within
your original folder. The display will then do one of two things: If your window
is open wide enough, it will display the contents of the second folder in yet
another column. If no other columns are available, the columns will slide to the
left, and a scroll bar will appear at the bottom of the window. Using this
scroll bar, you can quickly trace the steps you've taken to reach a file.
If you'd like to adjust the width of the columns, grab the handle
(represented by two vertical lines) and drag itall the columns will resize
accordingly. Holding down Option while dragging the handle will resize only the
columns to the left or right of the divider line. Figure 3.11 shows a
multicolumn display that reaches down several levels.

TIP

If you use the horizontal scroll bar to move back along a path, the folders
you've chosen will remain highlighted in the columns. You can, at any time,
choose a different folder from any of the columns. This will refresh the column
to the right of your choice. There is no need to start from the beginning every
time you want to change your location.

Figure 3.11 Using the Column view, you can easily drill down through the
folders on your hard drive.

If at first glance this seems too complicated or awkward, I urge you to try
it. The Column mode is a very fast and efficient means of finding what
you're looking for.

Finally, Command-clicking on the title of the window will reveal the same
pop-up list of folders as the Icon view. Choose one of the items in the list to
jump to it.

There is one other big bonus of using the Column view: the ability to
instantly see the contents of a file without opening it. You already know that
as you choose folders, their contents appear in the column to the right, but
what happens if you choose a file or application instead?

The answer is that a preview or description of the selected item will appear
in the column to the right. For an example, take a look at Figure 3.12, where
the front page of a PDF file is displayed.

Figure 3.12 When a file is selected, a preview is shown in the rightmost
column.

This is a convenient way of viewing pictures and other forms of supported
QuickTime media. When an application or a file that cannot be previewed is
chosen, information about the file will be displayed, such as the
creation/modification dates, size, and version.

TIP

Do not underestimate the power of this feature. Not only can you view
pictures, you can also view QuickTime movies and other media using this same
technique.

In fact, if you have a large collection of MP3s (legally obtained, of course)
and you're using the Column view mode, you can actually listen to your MP3s
without launching an MP3 player application. Unfortunately, the MP3 does not
continue to play if you switch off the selected file, but that's hardly
worth mentioning considering the added functionality.

Column View Options

The column view options, shown in Figure 3.13, are quite sparse. As usual,
the text size is adjustable, and you can also choose to shown the small icons in
each column, and whether the far right column is used for a preview, or will
just act as a file list. There are no global view options for the Column view
mode.

Figure 3.13 Choose whether to display icons in each column and whether a
preview is displayed.

The Column view obviously has its advantages, such as file previews and an
easy way to reach files deep in the file system. But it is lacking in one
respect in which the other, more traditional, views excel: jumping between and
viewing multiple folders simultaneously.

The Icon view, for example, appeals to Mac users who are accustomed to having
many windows open simultaneously. Moving between windows has been the key to
successfully operating the Mac for many years. The List view allows a single
window to display the contents of multiple folders simultaneously, which also
makes it a breeze to navigate.

So, why is the Column mode more difficult? Because it was designed to be used
with the Mac OS X Finder's toolbar. The original NeXT version of what we
call the Finder had a feature similar to the toolbar that allowed frequently
used items to be stored in it. Similarly, the toolbar can be used to store
common folders and applications, allowing the users of the Column view (and any
other view) to move files without having to navigate up the directory path. The
"Finder Toolbar" section of the chapter will examine the toolbar and
its various customizations in depth.

The Go Menu

If you'd like to navigate quickly from any view, you can use the folder
shortcuts contained in the Go menu. This menu is introduced in Mac OS X and
enables the user to jump the Finder to one of several predefined locations, or
to manually enter the name of a directory to browse:

ComputerJump to the Computer level of the file hierarchy. At
the Computer level, you can browse connected storage devices and network volumes
(Shift+Command+C).

HomeGo to your home directory (Shift+Command+H).

iDiskThe iDisk selection is one of the more interesting
options. If you have signed up for a .Mac account, choosing this option will
mount your iDisk on your desktop. If this selection fails, be sure that you have
entered your iDisk username and password into the Internet System Preferences
panel (Shift+Command+I) and make sure you are online!

ApplicationsJump to the System Applications folder
(Shift+Command+A).

FavoritesFavorite folders are determined by you.
First introduced in the Open/Save panels discussed in Chapter 2, Favorites let
you specify the folders that you'd like to access quickly. In addition to
using the Open/Save dialogs, you can also add Favorites using the Add to
Favorites... option in the Finder's File menu (Command+T). Select the
folder you want to be a Favorite, and then use the menu to add it. If you do not
have a folder selected, the directory represented by the frontmost Finder window
will be used. The Go menu's first "Favorites" option
(Shift+Command+F) opens the Favorites folder.

Recent FoldersThe Recent Folders submenu contains a
system-maintained list of the last ten folders you visited.

The final quick-navigation option is the Go to the Folder dialog box
(Shift+Command+G). For now, this is as close as we're going to come to the
command line. Mac users beware and Windows/Linux users rejoice. You're
about to tell the Finder where you want to be, based on a pathname you enter!
Figure 3.14 shows the Go to the Folder dialog box.

You can type any folder pathname into the Go to the Folder field. Folder
names are separated by the / character. Think of it as being similar to
a Web URL. Table 3.1 shows a few shortcuts you can use to navigate your
drive.

Table 3.1 Shortcuts To Help You Navigate Your System

Path

Purpose

/

The root (top) level of your hard drive.

~/

Your home directory.

~<username>

Replace <username> with the name of another user to
jump to that user's home directory.

/<directory>

Move to a directory relative to the root of the file system.

<directory>

Move to a directory relative to the directory you're currently in.

As you type in your pathname, Mac OS X will watch what
you're typing and attempt to autocomplete the name of the directory. Click
Go or press Return when you've finished typing the directory you want to
visit.

NOTE

This function is provided mostly for those users who are comfortable dealing
with pathnames. It can be used to jump to the hidden Unix directories on your
system, such as /etc, /usr, and so on.

If you'd like to make all of the BSD subsystem viewable within the
Finder, you can do so by entering the following command in a terminal window:
defaults write com.apple.Finder AppleShowAllFiles YES. To turn off the
feature, use the same command with NO at the end. You can learn more
about the Mac OS X Defaults system in Chapter 20, "Command-Line
Configuration and Administration," and more about the command line in
Chapter 12.

TIP

The Mac and Unix systems make strange bedfellows. The Mac has traditionally
used a colon (:) to separate folder names in a path; therefore, it didn't
allow colons within filenames. Unix, on the other hand, doesn't allow /
within filenames, but it does allow colons.

p>In the Mac OS X Finder, the : character still isn't allowed (it is
replaced with a hyphen [-] if you try to use it in a file or directory name),
but / can be used in a name. Unfortunately, the Go to the Folder dialog
cannot deal with directories that include the / because it is thinking in
terms of Unix directories. The moral of the story is, "Don't name your
directories with a / and expect to be able to navigate to them using the Go to
the Folder dialog box."